The Line of Duty by Nichole Severn

Author:Nichole Severn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2020-07-13T21:18:14+00:00

Chapter Nine

“You look like hell,” a familiar voice said.

Vincent breathed through the relentless pain around two cracked ribs, a gunshot wound and the beginning of infection in his thigh, then focused on the woman beside the hospital bed. His stomach dropped. Not Shea. Although he wasn’t disappointed to see Kate Monroe—the team’s resident psychologist—hers wasn’t the face he needed right now. Fluorescent lighting reflected off her blond-streaked hair pulled back in a low knot. She looked good, considering she and her thought-to-be-dead husband had barely survived a serial killer’s hunt less than two months ago. Now here she was, her skin almost glowing, but maybe that was a side effect of the pregnancy. Vincent leveraged his weight into the mattress with his uninjured hand, careful of the new sling around his arm, and positioned himself higher in the bed. His head throbbed at the base of his skull, the lights too bright. “You say the nicest things, Doc.” He couldn’t stop the groan rumbling through his chest as he moved to throw off one of the hospital’s heavy blankets. “Where’s Shea?”

“Officer Ramsey is resting comfortably down the hall. The surgeon was able to retrieve the bullet in one piece without any complications. She’ll make a full recovery as long as she gets the rest she needs. But knowing what I do about her, I don’t see that happening anytime soon. That being the case, I’m having Braxton keep an eye on her.” Kate crossed one leg over the other and sat back in the chair, that all-too-knowing gaze weighing on him. “You want to talk about what happened out there? About why you used Blackhawk resources to investigate a case, but didn’t feel the need to involve the rest of your team?”

“Elizabeth.” The network security analyst’s name was torn from his mouth. He’d asked her to run the fingerprint he’d recovered from the warehouse fire that night through IAFIS. He should’ve known she’d push it up the ladder, but he couldn’t blame her, either. Blackhawk’s founder, Sullivan Bishop, required honesty from all his operatives. It wasn’t fair of him to put that kind of pressure on one of his teammates. Or one of his closest friends.

“Give her credit.” Kate crossed her arms and sat forward. “She didn’t brief Sullivan about the fingerprint until after Search and Rescue recovered you and Shea on that lake. I think she was honestly more worried she’d missed something than anything else.” Bright green eyes assessed him, as though she were trying to see inside his head. “We were all worried, Vincent. You’ve helped save every single one of your teammates’ lives in the field. Did you really think we weren’t going to do the same for you?”

Nausea replaced the focus of pain. “Everyone I’ve involved has paid the price, Kate. I’ve already lost two of my best investigators in New York, and I almost lost Shea out there.” The thought spiked his blood pressure as acid climbed up his throat. This was on him.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.